Posted
Quite a while ago I watched the SyFy's (I hate the new name so much...) TV series The Expanse based on a series of books with the same title. It interested me enough to read the books themselves. Right in the first 30 pages I saw something which unsettled me. I kept it boggled inside me until now.

In the first moments of the book (and TV series) it is established that the protagonist has a personal relationship of sorts with the spacecraft's navigator. The thing is - in the TV series the navigator is a conventionally attractive WHITE blond woman, in the book she is of Nigerian descent. Additionally not all that conventionally attractive (ok, I seem to remember her as such but I seem not to find proof of that in a short examination of the book itself).

I completely understand differences between TV/movie and book versions, I mean you often can't reproduce certain things on the screen. I'm fine with erasing characters, even changing them to accommodate plot development. However in this particular case I see no reason why the protagonist's initial sexual partner has had her race changed. The character is minor, a few scenes and then death, I can't find a valid reason why in narrative there had to be a change to white.

I mean after 8 years of Obama, isn't it ok in the US to have characters whose skin happens to be black? A decade ago and earlier, I understand, the network would be afraid that casual racism would do something to the ratings, but now?

It's not even that much of a big deal, I mean this character is alive for literally 30 pages and somewhat insignificant amount of screen time. For me it was significant, if such a small role that was meant to go to a Nigerian went to a white actress (who I'm sure is an amazing person and a great actor), then what happens with all the other ones?

I seem to find a lot of TV with black actors, some shows centered around them, then a show without thinking replaces them. Is it a completely unfounded racism as I dread to think? Does it happen a lot and I'm too ignorant to see it?

As if to illustrate why SyFy may feel the need to do this sort of thing, apparently some people on the internet feel like Netflix's Luke Cage series is offensive because it doesn't have enough white people in it.

There seems to be a certain demographic out there who feels that not being catered to is a form of insult.

Posted
Sometimes there are reasons why a part that's originally (in a book, say) written for a non-white actor is played by a white actor. A lot of the time, however, those reasons are very poor.

Gemma Arterton in _The Girl with all the Gifts_ plays the teacher, which is explicitly a role for a black woman. The role of the Girl is for a white girl, but is taken by a black actor, but there aren't that many substantial roles for black actors in films, and specifically UK productions (David Harewood was saying as much on R4 this morning) that I think the producers should have tried much harder.

So yes. There are plenty of black actors, and if the role is for a black actor, pick one of them.

Moreover, white writers need to remember that they can try harder at writing more diverse characters. Again, British TV drama is, with a few notable exceptions, very white.

Posted
It is not only the TV and movie people. Even the book cover designers would whitewash characters. Older editions of Wizard of Earthsea show the title character as a white person. They don't even have the excuse of Hollywood, which can argue that movies and TV are so very expensive that they have to cater to the lowest common denominator.

The success of Luke Cage is actually a very good sign that this is changing.

Posted
I think sometimes a series is produced on the basis of giving certain actors important roles, and other actors a chance in minor roles. It is not always based on wanting to perfectly present the book series.

It is a pity, and it rarely produces a good series. Sometimes it does because the actors are really good and make it work. Or they bring out a great story because the original is so good, even a poor version works well.

But yes, characters should be played by appropriate actors. basic ethnicity should be respected - the author wrote that character in that way, so they should be portrayed in that way.

Posted
I really don't understand why someone wouldn't appreciate a book / movie / tv show simply because its characters were of a different race. Women and minorities are used to being entertained by overwhelmingly white male characters. But I'm brown and female, so I would say that, wouldn't I?

More tellingly, white people don't seem to have any problem being entertained by people of colour as long as they "know their place" ... sports.

That is fucked up, especially as LeGuin chose the colours for a purpose and 50 years later it is undone. 50 years when we are supposed to be a more integrated. accepting society.

quote:As if to illustrate why SyFy may feel the need to do this sort of thing, apparently some people on the internet feel like Netflix's Luke Cage series is offensive because it doesn't have enough white people in it.

There seems to be a certain demographic out there who feels that not being catered to is a form of insult.

It is set in HARLEM!

ISTM, the industry has three* problems. One is that not enough parts are written for people of colour, many of those roles that are written show a stereotype and that generic, non-colour specific roles are assumed to be white.

quote:Originally posted by Soror Magna:More tellingly, white people don't seem to have any problem being entertained by people of colour as long as they "know their place" ... sports.

Film and telly as well. Most roles for people of colour have fit roles that are either stereotypical or of limited representation. This is why I support casting people of colour in roles written for white people.

quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:So yes. There are plenty of black actors, and if the role is for a black actor, pick one of them.

And if the role is for an actor where race isn't really a factor (and there are plenty of those), pick the black actor sometimes.

For Earthsea, Ursula le Guin was quite specific about her choices for the skin tones of her characters, so it should be respected (and wasn't). On the other hand, consider something like Beverly Cleary's Ramona books (chosen purely because I've been reading them with my son). There's nothing race-specific about the characters. They are written as white, but there's no reason the story wouldn't work on TV just as well with black actresses as Beezus and Ramona.

quote:Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:And if the role is for an actor where race isn't really a factor (and there are plenty of those), pick the black actor sometimes.

To follow up on this, just because an author described a character in a particular way doesn't mean a TV adapation necessarily has to be faithful to that - it depends on whether the character's ethnicity is essential.

Suppose an author is imagining a character, and in his head, the person is white. As the author writes descriptive passages, it's likely that the character's skin tone will enter in to the descriptions. That doesn't mean that the character has to be white.

If, however, it's essential to the plot that the person is descended from generations of Vikings, it's probably necessary to make them look white and blond.

quote:Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:IOW, pick black actors for black roles, but not only for black roles.

Yes and no, for reasons most recently examined in Hell...

There's absolutely no reason why Cop#1 or Gardener#2 or Lawyer#3 can't be black, white, Hispanic, male, female, or old, for that matter. And there is a thing that if a crowd is 50% female, it's seen as overwhelmingly female.

I do think that for more prominent roles, the writers should take account of the race/gender of the actor playing them. Certainly, the actor playing them will interpret the role differently, and the audience will perceive that role differently too.

And even in the most extreme of circumstances - for example, Shakespeare, where the script is more or less set in stone - then that will still come into play. A black Cleopatra and a white Marc Antony brings out different themes due to our current contexts.

quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:So yes. There are plenty of black actors, and if the role is for a black actor, pick one of them.

And if the role is for an actor where race isn't really a factor (and there are plenty of those), pick the black actor sometimes.

For Earthsea, Ursula le Guin was quite specific about her choices for the skin tones of her characters, so it should be respected (and wasn't). On the other hand, consider something like Beverly Cleary's Ramona books (chosen purely because I've been reading them with my son). There's nothing race-specific about the characters. They are written as white, but there's no reason the story wouldn't work on TV just as well with black actresses as Beezus and Ramona.

IOW, pick black actors for black roles, but not only for black roles.

The Ramonaverse also set in fifties era suburban Oregon, but the people who made the dreadful film adaptation saw no need to stick to that. I grew up in a 1970's San Francisco suburb-- very diverse. The white neighborhood lived next to the Portuguese neighbor, who lived next to the black neighbor, who lived next to the blended white/ Mexican family. All of their kids totally behaved like the residents of Klickitat(?) Street.

So, yeah, make the Quimbys black, make Henry Huggins Henry Hernandez, and set the whole thing in San Francisco's Geneva District, circa 1970( it was a quiet family-type area at the time) and just cast local kids for the schoolmates. Could not be mor easy! You don't have to hunt down diversity, just work where it already is!

quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:I do think that for more prominent roles, the writers should take account of the race/gender of the actor playing them. Certainly, the actor playing them will interpret the role differently, and the audience will perceive that role differently too.

This presupposes there are behavioural characterises inherited from one's skin colour. There are not.This presupposes that all book, television and film productions are thoroughly grounded in reality. They are not.

Posted
I would love for somebody to do an "experimental" production (whether on stage or TV) in which casting would be done in the following way: the race of the actor playing the part would be filled randomly. Imagine a hat in which the various races would be represented in proportion to their prevalence in the country. So you first declare which role is being filled. Then reach into the hat and pull out a slip. Whatever race is listed on that slip, the actor must be cast from that race. It would be deemed irrelevant what the role was.

Obviously, there would likely be some strange character combinations (especially within families!), but quality actors filling the role would then be challenged to make it work--to try to get it to the point where the audience no longer pays attention to the race of the character.

That, of course, is the experiment part: could the actors pull it off? Shakespearean plays would be ideal for the experiment. I would expect, in the first act the audience would be distracted by the "unusual" racial mixture, but could the actors be convincing and get the audience to accept (or, rather, pay no attention) to that by the end of the play?

[ 07. October 2016, 20:15: Message edited by: Hedgehog ]

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quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:I do think that for more prominent roles, the writers should take account of the race/gender of the actor playing them. Certainly, the actor playing them will interpret the role differently, and the audience will perceive that role differently too.

This presupposes there are behavioural characterises inherited from one's skin colour. There are not.This presupposes that all book, television and film productions are thoroughly grounded in reality. They are not.

Sigh. We did all this in Hell.

There are, in some circumstances, ways which we behave because of our age, gender, class, and yes, race. I know you don't agree with that, but I think you're very wrong.

And no, it doesn't matter if the setting is 'fantasy' or not: it simply freights a different set of circumstances and behaviours.

Posted
They do this, in theater. I saw a superb production of Sense and Sensibility last weekend. The older Dashwood sisters were white, but the little sister Margaret was an Asian actress, and there was a black woman playing a supporting role.

quote:Originally posted by Hedgehog:That, of course, is the experiment part: could the actors pull it off? Shakespearean plays would be ideal for the experiment. I would expect, in the first act the audience would be distracted by the "unusual" racial mixture, but could the actors be convincing and get the audience to accept (or, rather, pay no attention) to that by the end of the play?

Shakespeare has been adapted the hell out of and still kept the story alive. Mercutio, in the 1996 Romeo + Juliet is black. No dialogue is changed for that. Does not need to be.

I am not saying race, and its attendant issues, should never be considered, just that it needn't always be a focus simple because a person of colour is in a role.

quote:There are, in some circumstances, ways which we behave because of our age, gender, class, and yes, race.

Some circumstance, not all. And there are many, many, many departures from reality even in "serious" drama that don't exist in reality yet are nothing more than geek talking points. The rest of the public don't care. But race is different?BTW, race does not make a person behave differently, the cultural associations and preconceptions can. And part of what can break those preconceptions is to mix things up. Yes, we need more shows that realistically depict racial tensions, but we also need those that shake the stereotypes. For everyone.

quote: And no, it doesn't matter if the setting is 'fantasy' or not: it simply freights a different set of circumstances and behaviours.

Star Trek(TOS)(TNG) did discuss race but did so obliquly. It treated Uhura, Geordi and Sulu as regular members of the crew. Just regular people. They are not diminished because of this.

quote:Originally posted by lilBuddha:It treated Uhura, Geordi and Sulu as regular members of the crew. Just regular people. They are not diminished because of this.

Yes.

And in context, ST:OS casting a black woman, an alien, a Chinese man and a Russian as bridge officers was a deliberate, knowing, and utterly bold statement about race and gender. The writers did that for the express purpose that you're denying existed.

quote:Originally posted by lilBuddha:And part of what can break those preconceptions is to mix things up. Yes, we need more shows that realistically depict racial tensions, but we also need those that shake the stereotypes.

Which is pretty much what I was proposing in my experimental set-up.

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Posted
I saw a production of Twelfth Night where the twins, Viola and Sebastian, who are supposed to be hard to tell apart, were played by a black man and a white woman.

Once I got past my surprise, I realized it didn't make any difference. Each of them played their role very well. I think it's more important to consider the particular talents of each actor rather than focusing on race.

quote:Originally posted by Moo: I saw a production of Twelfth Night where the twins, Viola and Sebastian, who are supposed to be hard to tell apart, were played by a black man and a white woman.

Once I got past my surprise, I realized it didn't make any difference. Each of them played their role very well. I think it's more important to consider the particular talents of each actor rather than focusing on race.

Creates a bit of dramatic irony. The "indistinguishable" trope of twins in Shakespeare's comedies is so absurd on the face of it that it has to be intended as farce. Using two actors who are outrageously easy to tell apart makes it all the funnier. Having one of them 7 feet tall and the other 5 feet tall would work just as well and be just as funny.

quote:Originally posted by Hedgehog: Which is pretty much what I was proposing in my experimental set-up.

On the stage, that works (as I've said in other threads, you don't expect photorealism on stage).

On TV, if you randomly allocate a black kid to white parents, then (unlikely mixed-race phenotype surprises aside) you're going to assume an adoption. Which will be fine for 95% of storylines, but not the one about Dad's genetic timebomb.
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Posted
Going back to the OP, would there still be an issue in the US, which is presumably the target audience, about having an interracial romantic relationship on screen? I.e., is it more OK to have a white couple, or a black couple, than one where one of them is black and the other one is white?

quote:Originally posted by Enoch: Going back to the OP, would there still be an issue in the US, which is presumably the target audience, about having an interracial romantic relationship on screen? I.e., is it more OK to have a white couple, or a black couple, than one where one of them is black and the other one is white?

quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor: Originally posted by lilBuddha:It treated Uhura, Geordi and Sulu as regular members of the crew. Just regular people. They are not diminished because of this. And in context, ST:OS casting a black woman, an alien, a Chinese man and a Russian as bridge officers was a deliberate, knowing, and utterly bold statement about race and gender.

Yes, I know. You said it cannot be done in fantasy and I should you an example where it has been done.

quote: The writers did that for the express purpose that you're denying existed.

I'm not denying their purpose. Black, female role models are important to me, so I've read a bit about Uhura. Not claiming to be an expert, but certainly not a noob.

Your responses do not show an understanding of what I am attempting to convey.I will say it as simply as I can: Casting people of colour in white roles* helps normalise the person of colour as a person rather than a preconception.

*"white" roles are often generic. The ethnicity is rarely an issue, as long as it is a white ethnicity.

quote:Originally posted by Enoch: Going back to the OP, would there still be an issue in the US, which is presumably the target audience, about having an interracial romantic relationship on screen? I.e., is it more OK to have a white couple, or a black couple, than one where one of them is black and the other one is white?

quote:Originally posted by Hedgehog: Which is pretty much what I was proposing in my experimental set-up.

On the stage, that works (as I've said in other threads, you don't expect photorealism on stage).

On TV, if you randomly allocate a black kid to white parents, then (unlikely mixed-race phenotype surprises aside) you're going to assume an adoption. Which will be fine for 95% of storylines, but not the one about Dad's genetic timebomb.

quote: Originally posted by lilBuddha:It treated Uhura, Geordi and Sulu as regular members of the crew. Just regular people. They are not diminished because of this.

And in context, ST:OS casting a black woman, an alien, a Chinese man and a Russian as bridge officers was a deliberate, knowing, and utterly bold statement about race and gender.

Yes, I know. You said it cannot be done in fantasy and I should you an example where it has been done.

Sigh. Which is the exact opposite of what actually happened, both there, and here.

quote:Your responses do not show an understanding of what I am attempting to convey.I will say it as simply as I can: Casting people of colour in white roles* helps normalise the person of colour as a person rather than a preconception.

Just call them roles then. I realise that historically, most roles were written by whites, for whites to be played by whites. We can argue about whether that was a fair reflection of society at large - latterly, it's certainly not.

And yes, fiction, whether it's in a book or on screen, has a role in challenging stereotypes as well as mirroring life. But since we're still a long way away from 'normalising' a lot of things - the visibility of older women, for example - to presume that the actors playing the role, and the audience viewing, wouldn't interpret that role differently is a profound misreading of how both actors and audiences work.

Posted
Ok, seems like just about everyone agrees that plenty of pictures whitewash their characters. Though I would like to emphasize how stupid this one particular whitewash is. In a show set some centuries in the future and in which there are plenty of other races, hell, in the setting one of the most powerful figures is black.

I'm thinking that this must have been a very specific change, thought over. I mean in the book there is the navigator Ade with African-sounding last name, in the TV series there is navigator ADE but with perhaps Scandinavian-sounding last name. They took the name from the book so it sounds very likely that initially the navigator was Nigerian (and to be honest, how many white women who are called Ade do you know?). Then someone decided to change the character to a good-looking blond woman. I'm wondering who and why?

My thoughts are as follows. The management may have decided that ads of the show may be marginally worse because the character who is important only in the first episode is not white. The writers couldn't be bothered to change the whole early storyline to make sure Ade is not the heroine so they were just lazy and changed last name and skin color. However why would anyone do that in a show in which of approximately six major characters three are not mainstream white (one Indian, one Pakistani and one black). There is so much non white in the series that it makes no sense to limit exposure of non-white characters. It makes no sense to me. And minor spoiler alert, at some point the main white dude will be in a relationship with a black character. I fail to see how this change happened. Unless they just run out of Nigerian actors and had to change the script during production. I sincerely hope that this was the reason. No casual or not so casual racism but simple error of sorts. Ehh, I can only dream.
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quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:And yes, fiction, whether it's in a book or on screen, has a role in challenging stereotypes as well as mirroring life. But since we're still a long way away from 'normalising' a lot of things - the visibility of older women, for example - to presume that the actors playing the role, and the audience viewing, wouldn't interpret that role differently is a profound misreading of how both actors and audiences work.

How much an actor is allowed to interpret or change anything is not a set thing. A black actor playing Colombo without altering the script, what is he going to interpret differently?As far as the audience, yes, they might receive the exact same performance from a black person differently than a white person. Making the audience think and readjust their thought patterns is the point.

quote:Originally posted by Moo: I saw a production of Twelfth Night where the twins, Viola and Sebastian, who are supposed to be hard to tell apart, were played by a black man and a white woman.

Once I got past my surprise, I realized it didn't make any difference. Each of them played their role very well. I think it's more important to consider the particular talents of each actor rather than focusing on race.

Moo

Take it a tad farther. The best Hamlet I've ever seen was a woman. Her actual gender was neither highlighted nor ignored. On occasion someone said "she," but most of the time they stuck with the actual text, and I'm not at all sure that there was any directorial mandate on the subject. But she was damn good as an actor.

We're going to see the same troupe tonight do Macbeth, and about half the actors will be black and randomly scattered through the roles. Gender is usually less random, but we usually have at least one or two women playing men's roles just because of the distribution of roles in Shakespeare's plays. I've also seen players in wheelchairs, which is bound to be a bit more confining in terms of what you can do on stage, but not nearly as much as you might imagine. No attention was focused on that issue either.

But then, the greater the incongruity with the part-as-written, the better the acting probably has to be. So this might not fly so well with a group of amateurs.

quote:Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:On TV, if you randomly allocate a black kid to white parents, then (unlikely mixed-race phenotype surprises aside) you're going to assume an adoption. Which will be fine for 95% of storylines, but not the one about Dad's genetic timebomb.

Yes, we know it happens. And we know it's pretty rare, because its deemed worthy of a mention in the national press. That's why I said "unlikely" rather than "impossible".
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quote:Originally posted by lilBuddha:As far as the audience, yes, they might receive the exact same performance from a black person differently than a white person. Making the audience think and readjust their thought patterns is the point.

Quite the point.

Also, when I read the phrase "Black person as Columbo , my heart did a little skip and I thought,"Delroy Lindo!"

I honestly link more people are getting bored with a lily white young pretty person narrative. It's boring to hear the same persons' story of that time, or the same archetypal stories. I think movie and television producers comfort levels are far less evolved than a lot of the people they profess to entertain. They need to be braver.

quote:Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:On TV, if you randomly allocate a black kid to white parents, then (unlikely mixed-race phenotype surprises aside) you're going to assume an adoption. Which will be fine for 95% of storylines, but not the one about Dad's genetic timebomb.

Trends are easy to see, but individual cases are more difficult. Any of you reasons could be why they changed the casting. But it would have been nice if they had kept the character Nigerian. For both the lack of parts and for the relationship.

Posted
Some of the best Shakespeare I've seen involved Cate Blanchett playing King Richard II and Pamela Rabe (who would be a superstar if she had focused on film rather than stage) playing King Richard III.

That production illustrated to me, more vividly than anything else I've seen, that finding the right actor for the part is not merely a product of ticking some boxes about how they look.

The whole thing about acting is that you're playing someone else, not yourself.

[ 08. October 2016, 03:18: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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--The kiss between Uhura and Kirk in the "Plato's Children" episode was the first inter-racial kiss on (American TV).

--Nichelle Nichols was going to quit, until Dr. King convinced her to stay in the ground-breaking role.

--Actually, Sulu was Japanese, not Chinese.

--They dealt with race in other ways, too. Like in the episode with the two men who were the last remaining people on their planet. One had black skin on the left of his face, and white on the right. The other man had just the reverse. Kirk couldn't understand why it was a problem. "You're both black on one side, and white on the other." Yet that difference had been the reason almost everyone had been killed off. At the end, the men refused to make peace with each other, and went back down to the planet--to hunt and kill each other.

Posted
I'm especially fond of the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode Far Beyond the Stars in which the black space station captain hallucinates he's a negro science fiction writer in the 1950's who gets into trouble writing about a Black captain of a future Space Station.

quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:And yes, fiction, whether it's in a book or on screen, has a role in challenging stereotypes as well as mirroring life. But since we're still a long way away from 'normalising' a lot of things - the visibility of older women, for example - to presume that the actors playing the role, and the audience viewing, wouldn't interpret that role differently is a profound misreading of how both actors and audiences work.

How much an actor is allowed to interpret or change anything is not a set thing. A black actor playing Colombo without altering the script, what is he going to interpret differently?As far as the audience, yes, they might receive the exact same performance from a black person differently than a white person. Making the audience think and readjust their thought patterns is the point.

So you're saying that a black cop investigating (IIRC) white criminals - and catching them out every single week - isn't a fundamentally different show? Given the initial run on US tv was from '68 to '78?

Even without changing a single word of the script, that claim is a bit of a stretch.

quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor:And yes, fiction, whether it's in a book or on screen, has a role in challenging stereotypes as well as mirroring life. But since we're still a long way away from 'normalising' a lot of things - the visibility of older women, for example - to presume that the actors playing the role, and the audience viewing, wouldn't interpret that role differently is a profound misreading of how both actors and audiences work.

How much an actor is allowed to interpret or change anything is not a set thing. A black actor playing Colombo without altering the script, what is he going to interpret differently?As far as the audience, yes, they might receive the exact same performance from a black person differently than a white person. Making the audience think and readjust their thought patterns is the point.

So you're saying that a black cop investigating (IIRC) white criminals - and catching them out every single week - isn't a fundamentally different show? Given the initial run on US tv was from '68 to '78?

Even without changing a single word of the script, that claim is a bit of a stretch.

Posted
I'm just trying to remember what the recent BBC "Midsummer Night's Dream" did with the two couples (Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander)... I think both couples were black/white and Puck's spell redivided them into a black couple and a white couple?
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Posted
I'll find the links later, but Shakespeare's Globe cast a lot of BAME actors. The most recent Midsummer Night's Dream on the BBC was broadcast live as part of their summer 2016 season and wasn't just swapping race around but also gender and sexuality, making one of the couples gay.

One of the summer 2015 productions, Nell Gwynn, moved to the West End and recast the lead as Gemma Arterton instead of the very good black actor who played the part at The Globe. With what we know of Nell Gwynn, it wasn't impossible she was black. King Charles II was famously swarthy.